I particularly like this comment as it points to a long term strategic reevaluation of the market needs for copper. Again, sitting on a copper mining district has to be good news...

As Macquarie's commodities research team pointed out last week, "Global copper mine output has continually disappointed forecasts and, more importantly, market needs over a number of years now, despite the strong financial incentive not only from high copper prices but also high by-product prices and a fall in processing fees paid by miners to smelters."

It adds that while there is no one consistently dominant cause of these losses, "the cumulative impact has been significant year-in and year-out since the middle of the last decade."